Sat, Apr 28, 2007

Senator Barack Obama emerged as the big winner at Thursday's first Democratic presidential debate. It's not so much that he scored a knockout punch, or that he was head and shoulders above any of the other candidates. In fact, it's the opposite.

The video left by Cho affords great insight into this sick gnat’s psyche, which provides us with a good blueprint on how not to become twisted and pathetic. Three principle evils repeatedly showed up in this petty ninja turtle’s video montage.

Reflecting the hostile anti-business sentiment of the Democratic majority in Congress, the U.S House of Representatives recently passed the “The Shareholder Vote on Executive Compensation Act” on April 20.

Someday, when the war in Iraq has become a historical episode, we will tally up the lessons learned -- if, that is, we ever learn any. Here are two worth mastering because failing to do so probably means we will no longer exist.

Sen. John McCain, who was the darling of the political press corps during the 2000 election cycle, complains to friends that he is getting much rougher treatment from the news media than his competitors for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney.

When President Bush proposed to enhance U.S. "competitiveness" by doubling federal spending on research in the physical sciences over the next decade, adding 100,000 math and science teachers to the nation's high schools, and making the research-and-development tax credit permanent, he set off a predictable bidding war on Capitol Hill.

Conservatives and liberals approach almost every issue with completely different philosophies, underlying assumptions, and methods. That's why it's so hard to find genuine compromise between conservatism and liberalism -- because not only are liberals almost always wrong, their solutions almost always make things worse.

Bathroom humor is an unfortunate staple of the entertainment industry, but it's not always intentional. Tongues wagged all over America when rock singer Sheryl Crow announced her latest planet-saving ideas on the Internet.

Do we still need to fight a war on terror? The answer seems to be no for an increasing number in the West who are weary
over Afghanistan and Iraq or complacent from the absence of a major attack
on the scale of 9/11.

As someone who has criticized the Bush Administration for not fighting back enough against relentless Democrat attacks and disinformation, I was delighted by Vice President Cheney's overdue dress-down of the Peter-principled and unprincipled Senate majority leader, Harry Reid.

Oregon Gov. Theodore Kulongoski called a gaggle of his closest friends to a photo op Tuesday that few could pass up. As part of his "Food Stamp Challenge" week, the governor is attempting to live on a food budget of $21 per week, which is about the average benefit for an Oregon food stamp recipient, according to the governor's press release.

If Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is right, nearly 60 percent of Americans agree with him that the war in Iraq is already lost. And if he is correct in saying that losing the war will increase Democrat majorities in future elections, then it may be fair to conclude that Americans now love losers. I'm not buying any of it -- and neither are the troops who are fighting this war.

Majority Leader Harry Reid is being lacerated, and justifiably so, for a pair of statements about the war in Iraq. The more widely quoted is the "war is lost" remark of April 19, which, read in context, amounts to a charge of rankest cynicism against President Bush and his War Cabinet.

Our nation was shocked and grief stricken early last week by the horrific and evil actions of a madman in Virginia whose callous disregard and utter disdain for the value of human life tragically robbed the world of 32 precious souls.

Dramatists often lighten an exceptionally tragic act with humor, sometimes referred to as "comic relief." Whether or not you believe in a Grand Dramatist, this week the news has been our own comic relief.

In the recent past, two unrelated news items grabbed me by the throat and refused to let go. One, of course was the senseless massacre at Virginia Tech. The other is the proposed piece of congressional legislation known as the U.S./Mexico Social Security Totalization Treaty.

For the first time in American history the House of Representatives has
informed the military that it knows more than the Commander in Chief
about conducting a war. In doing so this Congress also has notified the
enemy in our ongoing war in Iraq when the enemy should expect us to
begin pulling out troops and precisely how many months it will take for
complete withdrawal.

Yeltsin's mixed legacy could be seen at his funeral. On the one hand, he lay in state in a rebuilt Cathedral of Christ the Savior, reminding the world that he not only abolished communism, but state-imposed atheism -- another remarkable achievement.

Surely, you have received at least one forwarded email, which is a tribute to "The Americans." The text is a heart-pumping, pride-swelling rebuke to the world, which has been overly critical of America, and was purportedly written by a Canadian journalist.

Bob Chitester, the public TV producer famous for bringing his friend Milton Friedman's pro-capitalist series "Free to Choose" to PBS in 1980, is living proof that you don't have to be liberal or based on a seacoast to produce quality programs for PBS.

Thu, Apr 26, 2007

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is opposed to federal law enforcement efforts to apprehend illegal immigrants who are violating deportation orders. Ess Eff, the mayor told a gathering at St. Peter's Church Sunday, is a "sanctuary city" -- and has been since 1989. So Newsom assured the audience, "I will not allow any of my department heads or anyone associated with this city to cooperate in any way, shape or form with these raids." Illegal immigrants, rejoice.

Pity Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama. With 973 Democratic candidates jammed onto a small stage tonight, there will little chance for either of the frontrunners to “win” this first presidential debate.

Bennetts essentially argues that any woman who "opts out" of a full-time career for any length of time to take care of children and home is, well, an idiot _ which makes me wonder if a part of her is secretly a bit envious of them.

By now, we're used to people like Iranian President Ahmadinejad denying that the holocaust ever happened, even while he and his regime promise not only the destruction of Israel but the elimination of Jews internationally.

The problem with modern journalism is that there are so few real stories out there that deserve the cable news hypercoverage treatment. In between wars and terrorist attacks and election nights, reporters have very little to actually report.

Do we still need to fight a war on terror? The answer seems to be no for an increasing number in the West who are weary over Afghanistan and Iraq or complacent from the absence of a major attack on the scale of 9/11.

Some of the Bush administration's more vehement critics see its failures as the result of a twisted worldview. Others see them as the product of powerlust and corruption. But watching Alberto Gonzales fumble his way through a Senate hearing last week suggested that neither ideology nor venality is to blame. The real problem lies in a long-forgotten phenomenon known as the Peter Principle, which says: "In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence."

Under the guise of responding to the will of those voters who gave them control of the House of Representatives, Democrats are busy trying to undermine the war effort and bash the president to improve their chances of winning the 2008 elections.

Liberals want to resurrect the Federal Communications Commission's Fairness
Doctrine, a tenet created to ensure fair and balanced coverage of
controversial issues, so that they can regulate talk radio and require
"equal time" be given to opposing political views.

Psychiatrists of my acquaintance tell me they've got a lot of work in the wake of the massacre at Virginia Tech. Parents who had buried their heads in the sandbox since Johnny or Chloe were young children behaving badly are dragging their late adolescent and young adult sons and daughters in for checkups and treatment.

The world is in the midst of an economic boom that is raising living standards, creating jobs and improving the quality of life for billions of people.
That's not the story or picture we see on the nightly news shows, where the world is torn by civil war, terrorism, death, destruction and unending poverty.

Journalists are often accused of bias. Rarely do journalists level that charge against themselves. But the 35,000 members of Britain’s National Union of Journalists (NUJ) have done exactly that. Call them prejudiced, call them unprofessional. You can’t say they aren’t candid.

When I first began to plan my short biography of Thomas Jefferson, I found it difficult to research the chapter concerning the so-called Barbary Wars: an event or series of events that had seemingly receded over the lost horizon of American history.

These days, reporters regularly gather to bemoan the demise of old journalism and the rise of blogs. Future historians will peg Monday's death of David Halberstam, 73, in a California car crash, as a signpost of the old era's end.

The Virginia Tech massacre has spawned countless questions: Everything from why would student Cho Seung-hui gun down 32 fellow human beings, to why was campus security not able to prevent him from committing the deadliest mass-shooting in U.S. history.

The phrase "regime change" is associated with the doctrine of preventive war as applied to Iraq. But another sort of regime change has been the crux of U.S. policy toward China through most of the 35 years since President Nixon's opening to that nation in 1972.

Wed, Apr 25, 2007

For cranky right-wingers who think politicians don't listen to them, this week I give you elected Democrats running like scared schoolgirls from the media's demand that they enact new gun control laws in response to the Virginia Tech shooting.

Washington's back-scratching political class apparently sees it differently. A few years ago, they locked arms around a measure sponsored by Senators John McCain, a Republican, and Russ Feingold, a Democrat, imposing unprecedented restrictions on the political activities of everyday Americans.

Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid (D-NV) has declared "this war is lost" and has made a great deal of pretending to have decided when and under what circumstances US troops will effect their retreat from Iraq.

The rapture in 1960 over the independence of Nigeria seems incredible, and was always that, but three words -- anti-colonialism, independence and democracy -- were all that was thought to be needed to justify the jubilation. Nigeria had thrust away its colonial ties and would lead the way to the democratization of Africa.

is the case every year, the deadline for paying one’s federal income taxes on April 15 brought forth many news features on the burden of taxation. This year was no different, with one article by former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer in the Wall Street Journal getting particular attention.

In 1992, Bill Clinton hit a political home run with his "Sister Souljah" moment. In 2007, Hillary Clinton suffered a reverse "Sister Souljah" strikeout. If it isn't the end of her presidential aspirations, it should be.

The 32 murders at Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPI) shocked the nation, but what are some of the steps that can be taken to reduce the probability that such a massacre will happen again? A large portion of the blame can be laid at the feet of the VPI administration and its campus security personnel, who failed to warn students, faculty and staff.

Huge numbers of Americans don't know jack about their government or
politics. According to a Pew Research Center survey released last week, 31
percent of Americans don't know who the vice president is, fewer than half
are aware that Nancy Pelosi is the speaker of the House, a mere 29 percent
can identify "Scooter" Libby as the convicted former chief of staff of the
vice president, and only 15 percent can name Harry Reid when asked who is
the Senate majority leader.

Watching (and participating in) the intense Iraq War and War on Terror debate both in the United States and in Europe -- and the politics that flows from it, a sense of futility is increasingly hard to resist.

When it comes to the issue of gay marriage, the Jewish Theological Seminary blinked and gave way to society’s shifting mores. So one must ask the question: Should we guide religion, or should religion guide us?

On Harry Reid's planet, America's enemies need only have one objective: to murder, in a sensational, media-magnifying manner, enough of their own citizens to discomfit and distress Harry Reid Democrats.

Why did NBC News—as well as its competitors and print-media counterparts—show that video? Through the spectacular posthumous attention that the media have awarded him, Cho Seung-Hui has shown just how easy it is for an intelligent killer to manipulate sophisticated news organizations into serving as barely filtered propaganda pipelines.

People who read books are different from other people. They're smarter for one thing. They're more sensual for another. They like to hold, touch and smell what they read. They like to carry the words around with them -- tote them on vacation, take them on train rides and then, most heavenly of all, to bed.

Tue, Apr 24, 2007

Polls suggest that the leading attribute attracting voters to Hillary's presidential candidacy is her "experience," a virtue which contrasts, presumably, with the lack of it in Senator Barack Obama, her chief rival. But a close examination of her record as first lady and as New York Senator suggests that her experience is largely in the avoidance of death by scandal. Were it to be captured in a television series, it would certainly not rise to the level of "Commander In Chief" and probably not even to that of "West Wing." It would find its televised metaphor in the reality series "Survivor."

After the 9/11 attacks, plans were put in place to create a system that should allow citizens to receive local emergency information via messaging, and to report suspicious or terrorist activities. These plans will have benefits in situations such as the Virginia Tech incident, as well.

I've loved history for as long as I remember. My second grade teacher once told me not to bother trying to read the books I would always bring back from the library. Being as obstinate then as now, I would ignore that advice and plow through presidential biographies meant for middle-schoolers.

Former Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, one of the most admired women in the world, passed away in December at the age of 80, leaving a huge vacuum in our hearts and minds. Her posthumously published book, "Making War to Keep Peace" (Harper Collins, $26.95), released April 24, brings her ideas to life.

I’m sick of liberals using shooting massacres to advance their baseless theories on gun control. If Monday’s massacre at Virginia Tech University proved anything, it was that current gun laws do nothing to stop deranged killers, while leaving law-abiding citizens defenseless.

France has often, for better or worse, led the way during its history: in state-building, when Louis XIV created the modern French monarchy; in proto-totalitarian politics, with its revolution of 1789; in mass-mobilized warfare, in the wake of the revolution. Now, France is being reduced to a sad object lesson, a warning of the deadening effects of Big Government economics.

America's news media, an amoral university, an opportunistic district attorney, and a police department that seems to have collaborated in framing innocent students all combined to nearly destroy the lives of three innocent young men -- members of the Duke University lacrosse team.

If you were a student at Virginia Tech last fall and had a propensity for the gruesome and violent you could have satisfied your thirst for the bloody and course requirements by enrolling in Professor Brent Stevens’s English 3984 class, “Special Studies: Contemporary Horror.”

The slaughter of 32 students and faculty members at Virginia Tech, by a deranged student who then killed himself, forces us to confront and reconsider certain disagreeable facts about American society today.

Last week, I received numerous requests for a column responding to the tragic shootings at Virginia Tech. I had almost decided against writing one when I read the following letter to the editor in the local Wilmington McTimes:

It's sad when someone you've known for decades gets in trouble and you're not surprised. After the FBI raided the home of California's Rep. John Doolittle this month in search of records from the fund-raising company run by his wife, Julie, Republican House leaders didn't wait even a day before they pressured him to step down from his seat on the powerful Appropriations Committee. Everyone knows that such a raid only occurs after a judge has issued a search warrant in response to government claims that there is probable cause a crime has been committed.

We met by accident at a newspaper editor's convention in St. Paul, Minn., in 1989. She was to be one side in a debate over federal funding for the arts. She was for it. Her opponent was against it. Except, her debating partner's plane was delayed, and so the host editor called me.

This week, the Ohio Legislature will hold its second hearing on legislation designed to help the state make a real contribution to America’s triumph in the War for the Free World. It would prevent investment by Ohio’s public pension funds in companies that do business with the terrorism-sponsoring, nuclear weapons- and ballistic missile-building and genocide-threatening Islamic Republic of Iran.

Don Imus, recently unemployed pioneer of the high-dollar “shock-jock” industry, is a truly gifted man. He has the rare but unenviable ability to really tick people off at both ends of the political spectrum and everywhere in between.

The search for the propellant of the killer-madness in Cho Seung-Hui tells us more about disorders in American thought than about those of the murderer. Recall first and foremost that the crime was quickly identified as the "bloodiest shooting attack in American history" done by a single person.

Don Imus's slip of the lip created a media and racial outrage. He immediately acknowledged his mistake and apologized in person to the Rutgers women basketball team members. They accepted his apology with dignity and class. John Sugg is Senior Editor of Creative Loafing, a limited distribution weekly paper based in Atlanta, Georgia. Sugg did not have a slip of the pen or a runaway keyboard when he referred to me and all black Republicans as moronic. Sugg wrote, "Being a black Republican is not only oxymoronic, it's simply plain old-fashioned moronic." In the same article he also referred to me as a "sorry opportunist" and a "token," because I chose to run as a Republican in the Georgia 2004 U.S. Senate primary election.

For those who have been completely consumed with who, if anyone is actually changing the diapers of Anna Nicole Smith's baby, you may have missed this latest poke in the eye of the Bush Administration.

Speaking as a former fetus, I welcome the Supreme Court's decision permitting regulation of partial birth abortion. Now there's lots of talk about a wider pro-life strategy to build on this victory. Such a strategy must be one of persuasion as much as legislation. I am not an expert on the abortion issue, but I have learned a great deal about it, strangely enough, by studying the Lincoln-Douglas debates. These debates were about slavery. But look at how closely the arguments parallel the abortion debate.

The rap group Three-6 Mafia recently won an Oscar for its dubious lament, "It's Hard out Here for a Pimp." But what their song failed to underscore is that if you happen to be pimping the pathologies of American ghetto sub-culture for material gain, things couldn't look any better. For better or worse, this fact was brilliantly illuminated by the backlash over Don Imus' despicable comments about the Rutgers University women's basketball team. Now that CBS has decided to terminate Don Imus's appearances on its network and not simulcast his syndicated radio show, many in the black community feel they have been vindicated. But in truth the exploitation never even skipped a beat.

Sun, Apr 22, 2007

Before you start typing and formulating your thoughts and curses please understand one important fact: rates are made up of anywhere from seven to ten factors and posted rates,in the overwhelming majority, will not apply to you.

You may recall that when they were planning to protest outside the funerals of the slain Amish children in Pennsylvania, I offered an hour of airtime on my radio show to Westboro Baptist Church in exchange for their written promise not to protest.

After the Supreme Court's ground breaking decision on April 18th to uphold a federal ban on partial-birth abortions, one might think that certain political figures, like, maybe those who want to be our next President, would have a lot to say about it. With such a polarizing issue, a decision like this should have provided plenty of fodder for cheers and complaints alike. But a quick glance at six of the top candidates - - Giuliani, McCain and Romney on the right, and Clinton, Obama and Edwards on the left - - indicates otherwise.

To hear the mainstream news media tell it, the only issue really in play in the 2008 Presidential election is the war in Iraq. And, lest the voting public forget, the media are quick to report each casualty, mishap, and difficulty in Baghdad as mounting evidence for an immediate and unqualified U.S. troop withdrawal. What you're not hearing about is an issue that is likely to have a decisive impact on the Presidential race: abortion.

In September 1996, I stood on the floor of the United States Senate to respond to Sen. Barbara Boxer's comment that I was ignoring the "cries" of the women who came to Washington to lobby for the sustaining of President Clinton's veto of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act.

In 2004, George W. Bush narrowly carried Iowa and narrowly lost Wisconsin and Minnesota, the only state that has voted Democratic in eight consecutive elections. The man with the impressive resume is Tommy Thompson, who says he can carry those three Midwestern states.

Let’s test your knowledge of world religions. Below is the entire message delivered by one of the four religious leaders at last week’s convocation at Virginia Tech, in the aftermath of the horrible mass murders that left 32 dead and 21 injured.

In what is widely seen as a violent and horrid week in our nation's history one thing became increasingly clear: Liberals will tolerate, embrace and even advocate for violent, maniacal, and bloody killing that takes innocent life. They will do so especially if they believe it benefits them politically.

Across the Atlantic, young conservatives in Britain are trying to transform what they consider a disjointed and unorganized political faction into something that rivals the American conservative movement.

While these three stories might seem disparate and disconnected, each involves the debasement of human dignity. It's clear how mass murder and infanticide strike at the heart of human dignity, but it's easy to underestimate the destructive impact of mere words.